What an improvement we have seen to our common land at Well Hill this year.  A combination of some villagers and the Parish Council are paying for a contractor to mow the grass at the top and bottom.  This follows the efforts of the Cotswold Wardens to clear saplings and a party of village volunteers to tidy up and clear the debris, not to mention the rubbish also cleared from the lane in and out of the village.  More recently, drainage has been improved to improve the condition of the track down the Hill off the lane.  Once we see how this copes with a winter it may be possible to improve the surface of the track.

In the meantime, we want to improve the state of the verge which got into an awful state over the autumn and winter months due to vehicular damage.

We don’t want to deter visitors to the village from parking so we need to strengthen the verge.  The best solution seems to be to adopt an approach used by Tom Hatherell for some of the tracks around his farm: namely, to dig a 9” deep trench, 2m wide, backfill with stone and sprinkle with a little soil and some grass seed.

As you know, this is what it looks like at present (and it was looking a great deal worse over the winter):

It will look a bit raw for the first few months:

But after a while, the grass will begin to grow through and it will look pretty “rural”:

The Parish Council has approved the project and will pay for the digging out.

Please feel free to comment.